Sherlock Plays Artist
by wendymarlowe
Summary: A fan sends Sherlock a set of nude drawings of John - evidence of his art modeling days in uni. Sherlock seizes the chance to do some comparison sketches. And of course John can't say no. To much of anything, it turns out.
1. Chapter 1

For the first time in pretty much forever, Sherlock was the one to bring in the mail. This was the main reason John didn't see the hand-addressed envelope until it was too late and Sherlock had the contents spread out across the desk.

"What's that? Case?" John asked when he noticed Sherlock poring over several sheets of paper.

"Mmm. No." Sherlock looked up at him, eyes narrowing, then back down at the papers. "Sent by a friend of yours from uni, I'm assuming. You've changed less than I would have thought."

John felt a sudden wave of dread sweep through him. Surely it wasn't-

"Oh, there's a note. Excellent." Sherlock scanned the half-sized paper quickly, then sat back and smiled his I'm-truly-enjoying-this smile. "Ah, not a friend, just an acquaintance. But a fan of your blog, and who applauds us for our courage in being so public about our relationship despite the current political climate. Rather sweet, actually. You've inspired him to come out to his family, finally, after twenty years. Although really, I don't know how they wouldn't have already noticed. His handwriting is a dead giveaway."

John reflexively got as far as "I'm not-" before catching himself and taking a deep breath. There was no point in arguing with Sherlock - they'd been over this a hundred times before. Sherlock didn't see the big deal in allowing people to assume they were a couple, because that assumption was stupid and only stupid people would believe it despite all the "obvious" evidence they weren't shagging. John's assertion that Mrs. Hudson, Harry, half the Yard, and apparently even Mycroft believed there was something between them still couldn't change Sherlock's assessment. (He rather suspected it was because Sherlock classified everyone in the world except himself as "stupid" and thus not worth bothering over.)

That left the contents of the letter, though. John wandered close enough to look over Sherlock's shoulder. And _shit_, yes, the drawings were exactly what he thought they would be.

And Sherlock was back to being engrossed, lifting up first one page and then another, hunching over to scrutinize the lines, occasionally glancing up at John's face or chest or arm before refocusing on the drawings. "You've gained a good two stone," he said absently.

John cleared his throat. "Sherlock-"

"No need to be embarrassed," Sherlock said matter-of-factly. "Art modeling was a solid choice - I assume the pay was good, it took a limited amount of time away from your studies, and you didn't normally socialize much with art students so the social discomfort would have been minimized. You don't regret it, do you?"

"I didn't, until someone mailed you a bunch of nude drawings of me from twenty years ago and you started giving me that look." Sherlock tried to fake a contrite expression, and John glared. "Yes, _that _one. The one you were doing just a moment ago."

"I'm just curious-"

"You're _always _curious, Sherlock. And you have no sense of when you should shut it off. That's why we've got a singed spot on our kitchen ceiling and why the receptionist at the morgue isn't speaking to you and why Anderson follows you around at crime scenes reminding you to not touch anything. Go be curious at someone else."

Sherlock's frown deepened. "I'm not trying to treat this like an experiment, I promise. I just - it's an excellent opportunity to compare."

"Compare," John repeated blankly.

"You. Then and now. What changes in musculature the human body goes through as it ages." He suddenly brightened. "Oh, John - take off your shirt."

"What? No."

"Please?" Sherlock jumped up out of his chair and headed for his bedroom. "I've got a decent camera in here somewhere - I can take pictures now and then I won't have to bother you again."

_"No."_ John crossed his arms. "How many more times do I have to say it? Absolutely not."

"Why not?" Sherlock turned, genuine confusion on his face. "I said please, I was polite, and I'm trying to be considerate of your time. Did I miss something?"

_Posh, arrogant git._ "You missed the part where I'd have to be okay with you taking semi-nude pictures of me."

Sherlock waved lazily. "Not semi-nude - I want to chronicle the whole thing. Please."

"Just - no. No way in hell am I allowing that. I don't even send those kinds of pictures back and forth with girlfriends."

Sherlock stared at the ceiling for a moment and tapped his fingers on his leg in a random rhythm, then re-focused his gaze on John's face. "What if I draw you? Would that be all right?"

That . . . pretty effectively derailed John's indignation. He cocked an eyebrow. "You can draw?"

"Of course."

"I don't believe you."

"Come look, then." Sherlock swept through his bedroom door, leaving it open in a clear invitation for John to follow. Which he did, albeit with a strong sense of impending doom.

Sherlock rummaged through his closet, digging in boxes, until-

"Aha. Here." He extracted a somewhat yellowed sketchbook and pressed it into John's hands. "I may be a bit out of practice, but Mycroft and I _did_ have an art tutor for several years. I didn't stick with it, but you should see Mycroft's watercolors."

John flipped to somewhere in the middle - and stopped. It really was just a simple sketch, a few dozen lines at most. A much younger Mycroft, a bit thinner and with a hint of a smile, relaxing in an armchair and reading a book. The chair was just an impression, a few broad swipes of the pencil to give perspective, but the accuracy of the detail on Mycroft himself was absolutely stunning. The perspective was from an odd angle and at a distance, like Sherlock was peeping in through a doorway and furtively sketching while Mycroft wasn't watching. And even though John had never seen a picture of Mycroft at this age, might not even have been able to pick him out of a crowd in a photo, the drawing absolutely captured the arrogance and the self-control and the fierce refinement of the man, all in a few lines. It was amazing.

He flipped to another page. This one was a mishmash of random faces - some old, some young, both men and women, from all different angles. Along the bottom was a stunningly detailed sketch of a Tube station, people pouring out of the car as it stopped. Upon closer inspection, John noticed that each individual face sketched on the top of the page appeared somewhere in the larger scene at the bottom.

"You don't draw anymore?" he asked absently, flipping through more pages.

Sherlock leaned against the wall and shrugged. "I do in my notes, when I need to record bacteria or leaf formations or the like. When words aren't sufficient. But no, I haven't drawn people in years."

"Why not?"

He shrugged again. "Never wanted to."

John closed the sketchbook and handed it back. "But now you want to draw me."

". . . Yes."

"Nude."

". . . Yes." Sherlock's tongue darted out to moisten his lips, a tiny tell that he wasn't as indifferent to John's response as he wanted John to believe. "If it makes you uncomfortable, I can just draw your face, but I'd rather get the whole picture. Since the other drawings are available for comparison." He paused, flicked his gaze to John's eyes and then away. "What if I promise not to make any more messes in the kitchen for the next week?"

John couldn't help it - he laughed. _Bloody hell, my life is strange._ He lived with a flatmate who solved murders, who left human kidneys boiling on the stove and forgot to mention it when John went to cook spaghetti, who thought basic flatmate courtesy and things like _not _setting fire to the kitchen table were bargaining chips to be used in negotiations. And who thought asking his straight flatmate to strip and pose nude - for science, of course - was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

_Fine. _John took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. But."

Sherlock blinked. "But?"

"But one more thing. Two, actually." John folded his arms again. "One is that you're going to make an honest effort not to piss me off for the next week, _including _not trashing the kitchen."

Sherlock nodded. "And?"

"And someday you'll explain to me why I'm absolute crap at saying no to you."

The grin nearly split Sherlock's face. He said nothing, though, just grabbed a pencil case from somewhere in the box and clutched the sketchbook to his chest and nodded toward the door. John led the way back into the living room.


	2. Chapter 2

"So, ah, how do you want me?" John immediately flushed. "I mean, what do you want me to do?"

Sherlock hummed thoughtfully and cocked his head to the side, studying the room. "On the sofa, I think. Lying on your back, left knee tucked up a bit if you can manage it. Strip first."

_Oh god, am I really doing this?_ John pulled his jumper off over his head and tossed it onto his armchair. _I don't know if I can - not now. Christ._ His somewhat rumpled button-down soon joined it, leaving John's chest bare. He could feel Sherlock's gaze intensify the moment his bullet wound scar was uncovered. H_e's going to - he's got that look again_. Off went the shoes. _Like he wants to dissect me, to uncover every single thing I've ever tried to hide._ Socks. _This isn't art, this is science. A living anatomy lesson._ John's fingers fumbled at the button on his trousers, but he managed to get them off. And then froze.

"Not the pants. I want to leave those on." _Because fuck, I need something, anything, I can't model nude for Sherlock, I just can't -_

"That's fine, I can work around them." Sherlock dragged his armchair closer, fussing with angles and muttering about natural light. "On the sofa, please," he said in between mutters.

John lay on the sofa.

"Yes, like that - no, knee up a bit more, hands however feels natural - face me, that's it." Sherlock poked and prodded until John was displayed exactly how he wanted. And it did feel like being _displayed_, a butterfly pinned in a case. It was a physically comfortable pose, at least - flat on his back, head propped up a bit on a pillow and turned toward Sherlock, one leg down and the other angled so his knee rested against the cushions which would normally be at his back while he watched the telly. The pants provided him a tiny bit of privacy, kept the experience from being _completely _mortifying, but they were a small comfort when Sherlock was just _staring _like that.

He stared for a good five minutes, until the back of John's neck was prickling and the silence went past "awkward" and well into "oppressive." Finally, Sherlock propped his ankle on his opposite knee and braced his sketchpad against his thigh and started drawing.

It didn't feel like the modeling John had done before. That had been a well-lit classroom, impersonal despite the dozen or so art students all sketching furiously and the professor wandering around the room and making quiet suggestions. There had been plenty to think about, then - classes and homework, rugby matches, girls. Rather less on the girls while he was naked in front of other people, as much as he could control it, but the topic had appeared at the edges of John's consciousness at fourteen when he hit puberty and never really went away. John had gotten good at forcing his body to not react. The drawing teacher had been a shrill, ugly woman - that helped.

This was completely different. No girls, pretty or otherwise, to get in the way. No homework, no rugby game to dissect. Just Sherlock, head bent as he worked, showing off that mop of dark curls. His pencil fairly flew across the paper, quick little strokes interspersed with longer, firmer ones. John found himself inspecting the lines of Sherlock's leg, the curve of his fingers around the pencil. He wondered whether Sherlock had ever done a self-portrait. The man was undeniably breathtaking, with those angular limbs and the sharp cheekbones and the piercing eyes. Maybe the eyes would be hard to capture on paper, in black-and-white?

But no, this wasn't the time for that. John closed his eyes, just for a moment, and took a deep breath-

"Stop moving," Sherlock grumbled. "I thought you'd know that already."

"I'm holding perfectly still, you git."

"You're messing with your breathing."

"I can't exactly hold my breath until you're done, can I?"

Sherlock's pointed glare came through loud and clear, even through the fringe of his eyelashes. _"Hold. Still."_

John tried. _Not _thinking about his breathing only made him more aware of it, though, until Sherlock finally set down the pencil and steepled his fingers and lifted his chin. "Talk," he commanded.

John blinked. "About what?"

"Doesn't really matter - I just need you to stop being so bloody embarrassed. I won't be listening anyway."

_Wanker_. John closed his eyes and thought for a moment, but drew a blank. "Yeah, I've got nothing."

"Talk about something you miss. Something about your childhood, perhaps?"

"Not much there to be nostalgic about, I'm afraid," John said. "Harry's six years older than me, so she was already leaping headfirst into being an angsty teenager when I was just starting school. Family time was always awkward - our mum desperately wanted us to get along, but that just wasn't going to happen." A brief vision of Mycroft and Sherlock glaring at each other flickered across his mind. "I'm guessing it was the same for you and your brother."

"Mmm." Sherlock frowned at his paper, then added something with a quick flourish of his pencil. "Did her orientation go hand-in-hand with hating men?"

_Won't be listening, my arse. _Sherlock might not have been actually paying attention, but John would bet a great deal of money that Sherlock was locking everything away to be analyzed later. "Not all lesbians hate men, you know," he said mildly.

Sherlock looked up at that, confusion wrinkling his forehead. "Of course I know. But your sister does."

"Pretty sure she just hates people."

Sherlock huffed softly and went back to drawing.

And he did have a point. "It's probably why we weren't ever closer," John admitted. "Dad was big on the idea of finally having a son - wanted to teach me rugby and football, how to fish, all of it. He never did that with Harry, even though she'd have been happy to learn. She came out when I was eight - and yeah, there was a big row. Lot of shouting and tantrums. I mostly just tried to stay out of it."

Sherlock made an encouraging noise.

"By the time we were old enough to talk as peers, she had moved in with her girlfriend at the time and was already drinking. And I kinda had to choose between her and my parents. I stayed with my parents."

"You wish you hadn't?"

John shrugged, as best he could without moving too much. "I wasn't old enough to be on my own, and Harry was in no position to take me in. But I do wish she hadn't seen it quite so much like me taking sides."

"Because you're not gay."

The instinctive words - _of course I'm not_ - were on the tip of his tongue, but John held them back. Because they weren't entirely true, were they? He had no objection to the idea of falling for a man, it just . . . had never happened. It was a concession to Harry, in a way, to not define himself as "straight" even though - so far - all his romantic interests had been women. Because his betrayal, his choice not to stand up for her against their parents, it couldn't have actually been a betrayal if John were even just a little bit gay. Then it became self-preservation, which was a totally different thing.

"John?"

He blinked, and realized Sherlock had put down the pencil and was staring at him.

"It's not that simple," John finally said. "I mean, no, I'm not gay, but I'm not _entirely _not gay. if that makes sense."

Sherlock would never in a million years actually _admit _something didn't make sense, so John wasn't surprised that he didn't answer. The confused frown stayed firmly plastered on his face, though.

John sighed. "I've never been in a relationship with a man, but I don't dismiss the idea. And I don't want to be straight, therefore I don't consider myself straight. All evidence to the contrary."

"I don't believe it's supposed to be something you can turn on and off just by _wanting_, John. Isn't that the whole point of the nature versus nurture debate? Born gay versus conscious choice?"

"What, _you _up on a current debate?" John opened his mouth to tease Sherlock about his complete lack of modern knowledge that didn't involve dead bodies or strange poisons, but then a thought shut him up again. _This is personal._ It had to be.

Sherlock didn't say anything, just looked down at his hands and pressed his lips together tightly.

"You, Mycroft, or both?" John asked quietly.

A long pause. Then . . . "Both," Sherlock finally said. "We've taken rather opposite approaches, I suppose."

"And?"

Sherlock's head snapped up, his eyes an almost unholy shade of blue. "And as you can see, it's worked _so _well for both of us."

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that." John sat up, ignoring Sherlock's immediate protest that he was ruining the scene, and propped his elbows on his knees. "Let me guess: Mycroft occasionally dates sophisticated women and passes off his lack of physical enthusiasm as 'being a gentleman."

Sherlock nodded hesitantly.

"And you . . . you just try to ignore that whole aspect of your life, in the hopes it will go away."

He scowled. "I don't ignore it. I just . . . don't indulge. I can deal with it myself."

"Right." John grinned. The idea of Sherlock furtively jacking off in the shower was . . . kind of hot, actually. Particularly because he was so bloody _reserved _the rest of the time, unwilling to let himself be tainted by actual human things like emotions. What would he look like flushed and eager to come? Panting and unguarded and _fuck_, John really needed to stop that line of thought _now _because in a moment it was going to be all too obvious what it was doing to him, pants or no. He quickly stood and moved around to stand behind Sherlock's chair, where Sherlock couldn't see the proof of his sudden arousal. "Show me what you've done so far, then?"

Sherlock actually clutched the sketchbook to his chest. "No - it's not-"

"Come on, I want to see." John made a halfhearted grab for it over Sherlock's shoulder. "I'm curious now."

"No."

"You know I can pin you if I have to-"

"No, John, wait-"

But John was already launching himself into Sherlock's lap, knocking his feet flat to the ground with a thump and planting his rump firmly on Sherlock's thighs. He should have been mortified to do this, especially in just his pants for Christ's sake, but fuck it, he'd already been lying there almost-naked for ages while Sherlock inspected every inch of his body and he'd be damned if he was going to be shy about it now. John leaned his shoulder against Sherlock's chest, pinning Sherlock's free arm out of the way, and forced the sketchbook over.

And froze.

He'd already known Sherlock could draw. That part wasn't the surprise. The surprise was how exquisitely detailed the lines were, even in such a short time. And how there was an addition to the picture.

"I was wondering whether you'd ever done a self-portrait," John said quietly, unable to resist running a fingertip along the lines of Sherlock's back in the drawing. John was drawn exactly how he'd been lying - flat on his back, head sideways so his face was fully visible, his knees spread wide. Except in the picture, Sherlock was hovering above him, propped up on one arm with his legs tangled in John's. Their hips were melded together, Sherlock's body slotted in between John's open thighs. His hair was falling in his eyes, the sparse pencil strokes somehow still conveying the intensity of his expression as he focused on John's exposed neck. Ready to pounce.

"I . . . you insisted on wearing your pants," Sherlock said in a soft voice. "I had to cover them up with something else."

"And your own naked body was the only thing you could think of."

Sherlock's mouth tightened. "I never meant for you to see the picture," he said quietly. "I wasn't entirely lying about wanting to compare musculature."

"Mmm." John couldn't tear his eyes away from the drawing, even with the real living man right there beside him. "Not sure about the expression on my face, though." The John in the picture looked calm, ordinary. "I rather think I'd be more . . . desperate."

Sherlock's breathing suddenly stilled.

"I mean," John continued with mock disinterest, "if I were that close to you without your clothes on - if we were both naked like that - there's no way in hell I'd be casually looking around the room. Pretty sure I'd be frantically trying to come up with every possible way I could get parts of you inside me, or parts of me inside you." He wriggled his hips, just a bit, and felt the obvious evidence of Sherlock's arousal grinding into his hip. "Maybe arching my back a bit more, definitely grabbing that arse-"

Sherlock cut him off with a kiss, sharp and sudden. John moaned and returned it with enthusiasm, overwhelming Sherlock and pressing inside his mouth until Sherlock was the one looking dazed and whining desperately into the kiss. John gentled the contact, gradually bringing them from a fiery tangle of tongues back into a languid advance-and-retreat, little stealth nips at Sherlock's lower lip and long, slow slides of his tongue against Sherlock's front teeth. When he finally drew back, Sherlock's pupils were wide and his breathing was shallow.

"John-"

"Hush." John silenced him with another kiss, short and businesslike this time, and carefully extracted the sketchbook from between them. He let it drop over the side of the armchair, the noise loud in the silence of the room. "I think I have something to tell you."

Sherlock swallowed.

And John leaned forward to lick that Adam's apple, so tantalizing, proof Sherlock wasn't as put-together as he liked to think. "I'm pretty sure the last five minutes have made me a good bit less straight," he whispered against Sherlock's skin.


	3. Chapter 3

John stood up and tugged on Sherlock's arm, dragging him toward the sofa.

"What-"

"Strip," John ordered. "Actually, no, I'll do it." He tugged the tails of Sherlock's shirt out of his trousers and started slipping the tiny buttons through their holes, working from the bottom up. "I rather like seeing you at a loss for words like this. Think I should snog you like that more often?"

Sherlock dragged in a shaky breath, but held relatively still while John tugged on his shirt. "Lots - _ah!_ - Lots of snogging would be good."

"Wanna see me multitask?"

And then John stretched upward to catch his mad flatmate's mouth in another achingly languid kiss. It was fortunate that John's fingers were capable of unbuttoning a shirt without any assistance from his brain, because his central nervous system pretty much short-circuited the moment Sherlock's tongue touched his. Sherlock palmed him, then, his hand warm and heavy through John's pants, and unbuttoning Sherlock's shirt suddenly took a back seat to plastering their bodies together.

"Sofa," John finally groaned into the kiss. He drew back minutely to catch his breath. "No, wait - trousers first, then sofa. You finish the shirt."

Before Sherlock could answer, John was already sliding down his body to kneel at his feet. Whatever Sherlock might have been about to say, it died in his throat at the sight John knew he was presenting. _Let him lock this away in his mind palace,_ he thought. Some part of his brain not already occupied with _trousers off cock out NOW _wondered whether Sherlock would ever want to sketch him like this.

He allowed himself one light, teasing caress over Sherlock's straining erection before putting those thoughts to the side and focusing on unbuttoning Sherlock's flies and tugging down his zipper. John shoved Sherlock's trousers down to his knees with a rough jerk, then leaned forward and just nuzzled the shape he could see tenting the plain black boxers. Sherlock let out a groan which was almost a shout in its intensity. He probably would have tipped over completely if John hadn't grabbed his ass with both hands and propped him up a bit.

_"Fuck,"_ Sherlock moaned.

John hummed in agreement against Sherlock's cock, drawing another groan out of the detective. And then he dipped his fingertips under the waistband of the boxers and worked them down, and Sherlock's cock was finally, gloriously free, and the moment of o_h my god this is it, I'm officially not actually straight anymore _passed remarkably quickly and John was tracing his tongue over bare skin which tasted surprisingly warm and clean and not at all the way he had always assumed a penis would taste. It was far more pleasant than eating a woman out, anyway, and prior to this evening John would have rated that activity as very pleasant indeed. He ran his tongue up Sherlock's length again, just for confirmation, then took the tip in his mouth and sucked.

They moaned at the same time. There was a frenzy of movement above him - Sherlock tearing off the rest of the shirt, remaining buttons be damned - and then John was being pulled to his feet and shoved unceremoniously backwards toward the sofa.

"Don't want to wait," Sherlock said, gloriously naked and absolutely looming over him. He backed John up until John's knees fetched up against the edge of the sofa and then Sherlock did something, John wasn't entirely sure what, but the result was John landing flat on his back on the cushions and Sherlock immediately clambering up on top of him.

"Sherlock-"

"Mine," Sherlock breathed. They locked eyes. Sherlock's were wide and feral; John suspected his own weren't all that different. Sherlock undulated his hips in a precise nudge which dragged his bare cock over John's still-clothed one, and John couldn't hold in his whimper of absolute bloody _need_.

"I just sketched the beginning," Sherlock growled in that impossibly deep voice of his. "You, like this under me, already flushed and wanting me. Wanting more." He rocked his hips again. "Tell me."

John's fingertips dug into Sherlock's back of their own volition, seeking to pull Sherlock closer and eliminate the gap between their bodies, but Sherlock ruthlessly held his position. "Want you so fucking bad," John whispered.

"And yet you're still in your pants." Sherlock licked his lips, then deliberately slid his body down between John's legs. He let his weight press John into the cushions, but only over his cock - the result was a delicious slide of skin against the fabric of John's pants as Sherlock's cock, stomach, ribcage, and holy fucking Christ, his _neck _and _cheek _all rubbed against it. Finally Sherlock was crouched between John's knees and he was just _breathing _on him and John was fucking trembling.

"Oh god, just do it, please-"

Sherlock lowered himself that last inch and sucked a wet spot into the fabric of the pants, right over the head of John's cock. That moment alone put this into the top ten sexual experiences of John's life. But then Sherlock tugged John's pants off and did it again, wet heat of his mouth to bare skin, and it was all John could do to not whimper like a bloody dog. Because _oh_, Sherlock's mouth was glorious, slick and warm and attached to _Sherlock _of all people and John suddenly realized he was bucking his hips, seeking more of that glorious mouth. Sherlock kept it up until John was practically vibrating with need. When he pulled off with an obscene _pop _and slid back up John's body, John's saliva-slick skin stuck to Sherlock's and created altogether too much friction for John to keep breathing at the same time.

"Together, John," Sherlock said, John's name reverberating low in his throat. He ran a sloppy stroke of his tongue over his free hand - the one not supporting the majority of his body weight - and slid it down to encircle both of them. His fingers just barely reached around their combined girths. "I want to see you come," he growled. One more lick, applying more saliva to his palm and then to their cocks, then Sherlock was bracing himself with his hands planted near John's shoulders and he was thrusting his hips in a slow, inexorable glide, and the feel of his length pressing against John's was absolute heaven.

"Sherlock-" John tried to hitch his own hips upwards, to increase the pressure, but Sherlock had him pinned from the waist down and he couldn't manage more than a fraction of an inch.

"Just this," Sherlock murmured. "You're so close already, aren't you? You can come from just this alone. All at my pace. Just like I drew, you and me together on this sofa and naked and you're so desperate for me, you can barely stand it, but I'm going to keep fucking against you in this same slow rhythm until you can't take it anymore and you come. And your ejaculate is going to be the lube that gets me off, that makes me come all over your bare stomach. You want that, John?"

John's eyes may have rolled back into his head just then, because Sherlock added a little _undulation _to his inexorable motion and it was glorious, a new level of complexity, his hips tracing a graph of x-cubed instead of just x-squared, wasn't _that _thought a sign that Sherlock was rubbing off on him, and then the wonderful glide was just too much and John's eyes closed involuntarily as he came. Sherlock followed his body perfectly, milking every drop out of him.

"Yes, that's it, John," Sherlock murmured, dipping a hand to coat himself in the sticky fluid. And then he was rutting faster, losing his rhythm, until it was just on the edge of _too much_ and then he came with his head thrown back and his throat exposed and a desperate groan on his lips.

Sherlock collapsed on top of John, the sticky mess between them ignored. It was a pleasant weight, so John just wrapped his arms around Sherlock's ribcage and focused on the scent of Sherlock's skin. Even slightly sweaty, the hollow of Sherlock's throat smelled spicy-sweet and so tantalizing John couldn't resist sucking another kiss into the pale skin. From above him, Sherlock chuckled. The reverberations spread throughout John's entire body.

"Give me a moment," Sherlock mumbled. "No bones left."

It was too good an opening. "I'm hoping you get one back, eventually," John murmured in his ear.

"That was a terrible joke and you know it."

"Do you care?"

"Not particularly, no." Sherlock heaved a sigh and went even more limp on top of John. "Didn't finish your picture."

"There'll be time to touch it up later."

Sherlock sat up a bit at that, drawing back so he could look John full in the face. "You mean that?"

John rolled his eyes in response. "You really think I'm going to say no? You're bloody amazing."

Sherlock's expression was priceless.

"The sex was pretty good too," John added with a deliberate smirk.

Sherlock's face went through surprise to concern to surprise again, then finally settled on something John didn't get to see very often: unconcealed joy.

"Come on," John said. "Let's go have a shower. And you can teach me more about what I'm supposed to do when I'm shagging a bloke."

There was a lot to learn, as it turned out, but Sherlock was a surprisingly patient teacher.


End file.
